People don't wash their bath towels enough, and it's disgusting

If you took a shower today, your body may be clean, but your bath
towel is probably filthy.

The moment you used that towel, it became a breeding ground of
bacteria; fungi; dead skin cells; salivary, anal, and urinary
secretions; and many other germs lingering in your bathroom that
may have hopped onto your towel — including droplets from your
toilet.

The good news is that most of these microbes aren't likely to
harm you. In fact, many of them came from your own body. But
they're there, and they're multiplying quickly.

So how many times can you use your towel before concentrations of
its flora get so out of hand that you need to wash it? And do
people wash their towels frequently enough? (To answer the latter
question, we conducted a survey — more on this in a moment.)

"No more than three times max," Philip Tierno, a microbiologist
and pathologist at the New York University School of Medicine,
told Tech Insider.

And that's assuming you hang it to completely dry and air out.

"A damp towel is growing," Tierno continued. "If there is odor
coming from the towel, wherever there is odor, there are microbes
growing, so it should be washed."

Washing a towel every three uses seems extreme to me. I grew up
in California where water is a scarce resource. I used to have a
friend who, to my horror, would throw her towel into the hamper
after just one use. I always thought she was unusually
germaphobic, but perhaps she was onto something.

After speaking with Tierno, I wondered: How often do
people normally wash their bath towel anyways? Is it as often as
recommended?

We set up a questionnaire to find out. Using SurveyMonkey
Audience, we polled 523 adults aged 18 and older between Nov.
2 and 3. Survey Monkey selected respondents to
mirror the age and sex proportions of adults according to the US
Census.

Here's what we found: Only about 20% of the people we surveyed
wash their towel as often as they're supposed to.

Of the 523 people surveyed, nearly half said that they wash their
towels once a week. Assuming that people shower once per day,
this means that about half of the population waits about twice as
long to wash their towel as they should.

Another 17% said that they wash their towel only a few times per
month. And a small minority said that they wash their towel every
other day or every day — about 7% and 6% respectively.

Survey
Monkey

What does this mean? Most people don't wash their towel as often
as they should and their towels are filthy, but no one is going
die.

Towels serve as ideal breading grounds for germs because they
contain many of
the requirements for microbial life: water, warm
temperatures, oxygen, food, and a neutral pH. The human body
supplies these ideal living conditions, which is why our entire
body is covered in them inside and out.

When you wick moisture from your body, the microbes and other
secretions such as cellular debris that live on the surface of
your body get deposited onto your towel. Your cellular debris and
other deposits from the air serve as food for the microbes, and
the moisture supplies water at a neutral pH.

But it's hard to say whether the microbes growing on your towel
are harmful, since most germs in our households aren't dangerous.

If you share your towel with others, though, you could
potentially come into contact with organisms that your body isn't
used to dealing with — such as Staphylococcus aureus,
Tierno said, "which may give rise to a boil, or a pimple, or an
infection."

"The idea is to be prudent and to be aware," Tierno said. Mostly,
aware that your towel is disgusting. And you're probably not
washing it enough.